Murder Old and New

by Chet Williamson

  “What’s wrong with now?” Dave was getting a bit officious, I thought. That policeman side was coming out, which made sense, since he was a policeman, and investigating a murder to boot.

  “Well, okay…but may I see Harold first?”

  Dave nodded permission, and I gave Karen’s shoulder a pat and headed toward Harold’s room.

  His door was ajar, and I knocked, then stuck in my head. “Livy…” he said, and his face lit up a bit to see me. “Come on in….” Then he turned to someone else in the room I couldn’t see. “Okay?” he asked them.

  I heard a voice murmuring consent, and entered to see a man typing something into a PDA. I recognized him from having seen him making calls at the Gates Home, though I didn’t know his name. I introduced myself and told him that Lieutenant Hutchins had said I could see Harold, and the doctor introduced himself as Dr. Brian Gaines, then got up and said he’d be back in a few minutes, I assume in order to leave us to talk.

  When we were alone, I sat on the bed across from Harold in his easy chair. “Harold, what on earth happened?”

  “Oh, Livy, it was just awful.” He shook his head, and I saw tears in his eyes. “I’d been suspecting Tom Drummond. He’s just such a…I don’t know, a character, and Enid and Rachel’s deaths, well, you know, it seemed as strange to me as it did to you. So, I’ve been keeping an eye on him this past week. Our rooms are pretty close together, and I’d keep my door ajar so that I’d hear his wheelchair…don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but it’s got a pretty distinctive squeak to it…and when he’d go by, especially if it was late at night, I’d follow him. Far behind, so he wouldn’t see me. Only once I saw him do something kinda weird.”

  “What was that, Harold?” I asked, when he seemed hesitant.

  “He went into the kitchen. We’re not supposed to go in there, you know? I didn’t want to follow him in because I knew he’d see me. So I just waited, and he came out after a few minutes. I think…I think that’s when he got the knife.”

  “The knife…the one tonight?”

  Harold nodded. “I’d be willing to bet it turns out that knife was stolen from the kitchen. Then tonight…really late…I’d fallen asleep reading in my chair. But the squeak of his wheelchair woke me up, and I got up in time to see him going through the door at the end of the hall. He opened it first and waited a long time, like he was listening for something. Then he went through and I followed him. I stayed far behind. I couldn’t see him, but I could still hear him.

  “I took the stairs when he took the elevator up to the constant care wing, and I came through the door just as I saw him go into Room 124 at the end of the hall. There was no one at the nurses’ station, so I walked fast as I could down to the end. It was dark inside, except for the night lights they always have so the nurses can check on people, you know? But damned if I didn’t see Tom Drummond in that room starting to push a pillow down on that woman’s—I don’t know her name—but down on her face.”

  “Oh, Harold…”

  “I tried to stop him, of course, pulled him back by the shoulders, and the wheelchair rolled back and he dropped the pillow, but then right away he reached into his lap or next to him or somewhere, and he came out with the knife. I backed away from him toward the window, but he rolled the chair toward me, and it’s so narrow in there with the beds that I couldn’t get around him. He slashed at me with the knife a couple of times…cut my robe, see?” Harold held up his right sleeve to show me where the knife had sheared through the terrycloth. “That was when I grabbed his arm, and I guess I thought if I could just knock him down, I could get away and get help…”

  Harold paused, his eyes lost in the middle distance as he thought about what came next. “And you did?” I asked gently.

  He nodded. “Yes. I just…pushed him over, and the chair went down, and…the knife went right into him.” He looked up at me and there were tears in his eyes. “I never wanted that to happen, Livy. I was only trying to stop him, and then to get away from him. I didn’t want to…I didn’t want that to happen.”

  “Of course, you didn’t. And it wasn’t your fault.”

  Harold sat back and put his hand on his chest. “My heart’s going like a triphammer. It wasn’t bad when the doctor was in here, but now, now that I think about it all again…” His usual wry smile made an attempt to return. “This can’t have been good for me. Don’t think I have too much longer, you want to know the truth.”

  “We need to get you into a hospital, Harold.”

  “No! No, Livy, please. If I’m going to die, I don’t want it to be in a hospital. I’d like it to be here, where my friends are, not surrounded by strangers who don’t even know me.”

  “But Harold, you could come back—“

  “And how often does that happen, Livy? How many people do you know my age who are taken out of here to the hospital and then come back?”

  I couldn’t answer him. It was true. Once you were wheeled out the door, the odds were long that you would walk back in again.

  “I’ve felt him coming on, Livy, really. That hooded figure with the scythe that’s on the covers of so many of my old paperback mysteries. And pretty soon it’ll be Death Comes for Harold, maybe by Rex Stout or Agatha Christie, eh? And they’ll find me sitting here some morning with a smile on my face and a book on my lap—finished, of course. That’s how I’d like to go out, okay?”

  I smiled and patted his shoulder. “It’s not up to me. Let’s leave it to the doctor, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  There was a sudden knock on the still open door, and we both jumped like kids caught passing notes in class. Only now I guess it would be sexting. Dave stood in the doorway, his clipboard at the ready. “Mr. Newbury?”

  “Yes, officer?”

  “We don’t feel there’s any need to question you further tonight, sir. What you’ve told us seems to be borne out by the evidence. There will be an inquiry into the death of Mr. Drummond, but we’ll try and involve you as little as we can.”

  “Thank you,” Harold said, and seemed relieved. “If there’s anything more I can tell you…”

  “Not tonight, sir. Doctor Gaines tells me that you check out all right physically…though this must have been quite a shock for you.”

  Harold tried to smile. “Not quite my…usual night, that’s for sure.”

  “The doctor will give you a sedative if you like. He couldn’t before we’d finished with you, you understand.”

  “Sure,” Harold said. “Yes, I’d like a little knockout drop. I think I’d have trouble getting to sleep otherwise.”

  “I’ll drop by tomorrow, Harold.” I said, and gave him a little hug before I headed for the door. “And don’t worry—you just did what you had to do.”

  I almost expected Dave to tell Harold that that lady owes you her life, but he didn’t. I guess there was just more to investigate before that happened. Well, I thought, once I told Dave about my suspicions concerning Tom Drummond, he’d probably want to pin a medal on Harold.

  The doctor came back in as Dave and I left. We walked down the hall together silently. Then he said, “I was looking forward to seeing you again, Livy, but not under these circumstances.”

  “Same here. I didn’t get a chance to do a thing with my hair.”

  “I think your hair looks great.” We just walked a little more, and then he said, “What about that statement…about Drummond?”

  “Yeah.” I thought for a moment. “There’s really some stuff I’d have to show you—it goes way back.”

  “And where’s this stuff?”

  “Back at my place. On the kitchen table.” I remembered Fudge’s final burst of panic. “Or on the floor.”

  “You want to show me now? It’s pretty late.”

  I glanced at my watch. 2:35, ohmigod, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go to sleep after all this. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”

  “Make me coffee?” he asked.

  “Sure. But I’m fresh ou
t of donuts.”

  “Watch it, or I’ll bring you in for perpetuating stereotypes.”

  Chapter 17

  We got back to my place a little after three. Dave found a parking place on the street half a block away, and I waited for him under a streetlight as he walked toward me. I felt slightly salacious taking a man in whom I had some interest to my apartment in the middle of the night, but I told myself it was only business, and police business at that.

  “We’ll have to go around the back,” I said, and I was delighted to feel, as we walked, his gloved hand take my own.

  I unlocked the door and we climbed the steps to my apartment. When I opened the door, Fudge seemed confused, both by my being up at that hour, and by the fact that I had company in the middle of the night. But a few strokes and some rubbing behind the ears by Dave, and he was purring so happily that I wondered if I might share the same contented fate before dawn broke.

  I turned on the hanging light over the table, put the yearbook and photos back on the table, and then stepped over to the counter to make some coffee. “Take a look, Detective,” I told Dave. “See if you can find anything before I start my explanation.”

  Without a word, Dave sat and started looking through the yearbook while I ground coffee, put water in the coffeemaker, and turned it on. When I finally sat next to him at the table, he turned and looked at me.

  “Thomas Drummond,” he said, pointing to the picture in the yearbook. “This is our Drummond.”

  I nodded. “Yes. And this…” I took the group photograph of Elmer Bingley’s suicide and pointed to the boy with the rifle. “…is our Drummond too, at what I think was the start of his career.”

  Dave looked at the photo, then started looking though the others that my father had taken all those years before. “What the hell was this, a lynching?”

  “No. A suicide. Or maybe a murder. Maybe the first of many. Did you ever hear of…” I gave it two beats, for the sake of suspense. “…the Hangman Murders?”

  As it turned out, he had, though he didn’t know much about them. That was okay, though, because I filled him in.

  It took me a good half hour and several cups of coffee to tell him everything I knew about Elmer’s so-called suicide, the relationship between Lyle Flory and Ruby Bingley, Ruby’s pregnancy by her father, the mother’s suicide, Ruby’s disappearance, and Tom Drummond’s crush on her. At every step I used my visual aids—my father’s photos and the evidence I’d found in the old yearbook—as well as what I’d been told by ancient Ruth Lehman, and the information I’d gathered about Tom Drummond at the Gates Home.

  By the time I was finished, I felt I’d constructed a pretty good motivation for Tom Drummond’s murders, both successful and attempted, at the Gates Home. Dave looked at me, then at the pictures in the yearbook, then at the photo of Drummond at the hanging, then back at me again.

  “That’s pretty impressive,” he said. “Admittedly circumstantial, but impressive. Would you come down tomorrow and give a statement? And bring these along.”

  “Sure,” I said. I was a little breathless after my performance. “You think I might be right?”

  “Stranger things have happened. It at least gives Drummond a motive for trying to kill that woman last night…and maybe killing the other two, I don’t know. Worth looking into, though. I’ll see if there’s anything on Drummond. Files have been computerized now going way back, so if he was ever arrested for anything, we’ll know.” He smiled. “You did good, Livy.”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling great in spite of the late hour. And I was feeling great. My cheeks were flushed, I had a sweet caffeine buzz, and my heart was beating faster than usual. I think a lot of it was just having proven myself in some way to a man I thought highly attractive, and to him having given me positive feedback. Or, to simplify matters, I showed off in front of my sweetie, and he liked it. Heh.

  We were only a foot away from each other, and I looked at him, and he kept looking at me, and I don’t remember which one of us leaned toward the other first, but when one of us did, the other responded, and we were kissing, very lightly at first, then more seriously. I felt his fingers behind my head, and I put my hand around his shoulders, and we stumbled to our feet, our bodies pressed together, still kissing. It was awkward and clumsy and wonderful, and I knew that more was going to happen, and it did.

  And no, I’m not going into detail other than to say that we managed to make it to my bedroom, and that it was lovely and gentle and intense all at the same time, pretty much everything I could have wished for. Afterward I fell asleep, and when I woke up, we were lying like spoons and he had his arm around me, and it felt so nice that I went back to sleep again even though it was starting to get light outside.

  When I woke up again, it was full daylight, but it wasn’t the light that woke me. It was the clattering and grunting sounds coming from the kitchen. I hopped out of the now-empty bed, grabbed a robe, and slipped it on loosely as I popped out the door and ran down the short hall. My shoulder was still bare as I entered the kitchen and saw Dave and Ted in the throes of mortal combat.

  Actually, Dave, dressed only in a becoming (I had to confess) pair of boxer/briefs, was sitting on Ted’s chest. Ted looked at me in panic, but his glance stopped at my bare shoulder and, undoubtedly, the exposed curve of my breast before I pulled up the robe.

  “Ted?” I asked stupidly. Of course it was Ted, but the scenario was so bizarre that I was lucky to get out that one word.

  “You know him?” Dave asked, his weight on Ted in some sort of wrestling hold, I guess.

  “He’s my clerk.” I forced a smile. “Dave, this is Ted. Ted, Dave Hutchins…um, Lieutenant Dave Hutchins,” I added, as if the title explained why this stranger to Ted was waltzing around my kitchen in his skivvies while I was standing there half-naked. “I think you can let him up now.”

  “Geez, I’m sorry,” Dave said as he got to his feet and offered Ted his hand. “I got up to make us some coffee, there was a rap on the door, real soft, and then the door opened, and I didn’t know who the hell it was, I thought maybe a burglar, so I just…” Dave shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “No…” Ted said, sounding breathless. “You, uh…you couldn’t know…”

  “Ted wakes me up sometimes if I oversleep,” I explained.

  “Ah…” Dave nodded several times, more than he had to, really. What can I say? It was awkward. Really really awkward. “Uh, sorry…”

  “S’okay. Well, I’ll…I’ll be downstairs,” Ted said, averting his eyes from both of us and heading out the door. He’d taken a few steps before he realized he’d forgotten to close it, then turned back, eyes down, and rectified the situation so gently that I barely heard the latch click shut.

  “I really am sorry,” Dave said.

  “I know. It’s okay. You thought you were doing a good thing.”

  ‘He just seemed so…I don’t think I really hurt him, but…” His cheeks were getting red. “Look, Livy…I know last night doesn’t give me any…rights or anything, but, well, is there something I should know about this guy Ted?”

  “No. He works for me, and we’re friends, that’s all, though he has kind of a…reverse cougar crush on me, if that makes sense.”

  Dave smiled. “I can see how he would.”

  I tried to smile again, but couldn’t. “I’d rather that wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You mean you’d rather he wouldn’t have known about us?”

  “My private life’s just that, Dave. Private. I’m not…ashamed of having slept with you, but it’s…well, private. And it will not make employer/employee relationships any easier around here. So, keeping all that in mind, yeah, I rather this hadn’t happened—I mean, that he wouldn’t have known, not that this…” I flapped my arms back and forth between the two of us. “…wouldn’t have happened. I mean, I…like…this. Having happened,” I finished lamely.

  “I like it too,” Dave said, coming up to me and wrapping his arms around me in a
way that made me wish my robe was sheer silk instead of polyester fleece. “I’d love for it to happen again.”

  “Me too, but not right now. I’ve got a store to run.” And a clerk to mollify, I thought. I also thought how nice it would be to crawl back into bed for one more easy morning go-round. It would also give me an excuse to delay seeing Ted again, but that would only be putting off the inevitable, and would make things even worse when I finally showed up. If I didn’t get down there within fifteen minutes, fully dressed, hair brushed, and face washed to a shining gleam, I knew I’d get a hangdog had to have it one more time, eh? look from Ted, and I couldn’t stand that.

  I quickly made coffee, then even more quickly jumped into the shower. Fortunately, Dave didn’t try to join me in my naked ablutions, so I was able to dress, make an appointment with him at the police station in the afternoon, and kiss him goodbye.

  I paused at the door and looked back at him, sitting at the kitchen table in his underwear and t-shirt, and the sight made me feel so…I don’t know, domestic, that I could hardly stand it. I liked it even as I thought it was what I had been avoiding all these years, if you know what I mean and you probably don’t.

  See, I’ve never felt that a man in my life was necessary. They’re okay, but I don’t see the need to bring one in permanently. I’ve got my own business and my own life, and I like it that way. I’m too old to have a kid, both physically and psychologically, and, I’ll admit it, too selfish with my life to have one. There, I said it. So right away you’ve gotten rid of a major motive for the pairing-up thing.

  Still, when I saw Dave sitting there, so happy and at ease, drinking the coffee I’d made him and smiling at me over the rim of my Mary Engelbreit gardener’s mug, I couldn’t help but think if maybe this was the way it was supposed to be, and not me alone, grabbing a small container of yogurt while wedging my feet into my clogs and trying to get downstairs before Ted —

  Oh Christ, Ted.

  I ran more quickly down the stairs, but slowed just before I got to the door that led into the store. I stopped, composed myself, and walked into my place of business just as I did every other morning.